2016 Press Releases

National Archives Celebrates National Park Service Centennial with Film Program
Press Release · Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Washington, DC

On Friday, March 25, at noon, the National Archives celebrates the National Park Service centennial with a special film program: From the Vaults: The National Park Service on Film. This programs is free and open to the public and will be held in the William G. McGowan Theater of the National Archives Museum in Washington, DC. Attendees should use the Special Events entrance on Constitution Avenue at 7th Street, NW. Metro accessible on the Yellow and Green lines, Archives/Navy Memorial/Penn Quarter station.

In the 1930s, the Department of Interior made a series of films on the nation's growing park system. We’ll screen some of these films from the National Archives holdings, including Land of the Giants (1935, 23 min.), which captures the redwoods, sequoias, old growth forests, marshes, beaches, exotic flora, and fauna in California state parks; Great Smoky Mountains (1936, 11 min.), which explores the purple high country of North Carolina and Tennessee, where Great Smoky Mountains National Park’s 300,000 acres of wilderness boasts some of the highest peaks east of the Rockies and nearly 200 varieties of native flora; and White Sands (1938, 9 min.), which shows the drifting snow-white desert sands, unusual rock formations, and exotic plants of White Sands National Monument in New Mexico. Presented in partnership with the 2016 Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital.

The National Park Service was established in the Department of the Interior on August 25, 1916. There are close to 400 units in the National Park System, including national parks, monuments and memorials, scenic parkways, preserves, reserves, trails, rivers, wild and scenic rivers, seashores, lakeshores, recreation areas, battlefields, parks and sites, national military parks, international historic sites, and historic sites associated with important movements, events, and personalities of the American past. The National Archives holds the permanently valuable records of the National Parks Service, including photographs by Ansel Adams.

Related exhibit: The National Parks Photography Project, through March 21, 2016
George Bush Presidential Library and Museum, College Station, TX
To mark the centennial anniversary of America's National Park Service in 2016, this exhibit celebrates the important role that the visual image has played in the history and creation of our national parks. The core of this exhibit is the timeless black and white photography of American photographer Mark Burns. These photographs were taken from 2011 through 2015 with one iconic photograph from each of America's 59 national parks.

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For press information contact the National Archives Public Affairs staff at 202-357-5300.

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